zaterdag 13 augustus 2016

Freaks of Nature (2015)

Summary :
In the town of Dillford, humans, vampires and zombies were all living in peace - until the alien apocalypse arrived. Now three teenagers-one human, one vampire and one zombie-have to team up to figure out how to get rid of the visitors.

Genre : Horror/Comedy
Country : USA

Cast :
Nicholas Braun : Dag

Mackenzie Davis : Petra
Josh Fadem : Ned

Director : Robbie Pickering

My opinion :

“I think I'm having brain withdrawals.”

Completely hilarious. That's my feeling about "Freaks of nature". First I was afraid this would be another high school teenmovie. Eventually this turned out to be a rather absurd, horror-comedy. A kind of "Porkies in Zombieland" with vampires, zombies and a crazy army of aliens passing through. Of course the known types of youngsters were used again. As expected. First you have the cool student Dag (Nicholas Braun) who abandoned his friend Ned (Josh Fadem) because this one still acted nerdy. Of course he's madly in love with the girl next door Lorelei (Vanessa Hudgens), who looks tremendously tasty, but ultimately it's an impossible love because she's hooked up with a local jock. And last but not least, there's also the pathetic girl Petra (Mackenzie Davis) who was bullied by everyone. The moment this concept became clear, I sighed again in an irritated way. But after seeing a group of zombies getting of a schoolbus and moving towards the school entrance in their well-known manner plus a macho vampire who tries to seduce Petra in the next scene, it became clear that this could well be an entertaining film.

It certainly was entertaining. I myself am quite a fussy when it comes to comedy and humor. Rarely it happens that I start laughing spontaneously. Usually it's just a muffled chuckle or a modest smile. But this time there were a few occasions I had to laugh out loud. Especially the zombie community was hilarious. After the alien invasion, each population began to accuse the others and suspected them of participating in a conspiracy. As a result they all held their own public meeting where they encouraged eachother to take action. Needless to say, the meeting of the zombie community was the most calm and subdued one. Funny as hell. The principle of differences between the classes was incorporated shrewdly. The interference of a third party which turned all these groups against each other, looks familiar. Only the resulting confrontation is pretty bloody and ends up in a huge splatter fest (Only it's sometimes difficult to distinguish who's attacking who) with quite a few severed limbs.

Maybe I'm a bit too enthusiastic about this horror-comedy, because lets be honest, it's a pretty simple story without too many surprises or intricate storylines. It's a mishmash of genres they've mixed together. They've kept it lightly and certainly farcical. It sometimes looked like a slapstick horror. And speaking about horror. You should take that with a grain of salt, because this movie won't give you the creeps. Lets shed a light on the makeup and special effects. The only part that didn't look so great, was the one with the space invaders. That one really looked old-fashioned. The vampires seemed to be borrowed from the "Twilight" saga. It was the zombie mob that looked sublime. Here the makeup artists really used their complete imagination.

"Freaks of nature" is a true B-movie. Normally the acting is also of a questionable level in that case. Surprisingly this wasn't so bad at all here. I suppose the actors had fun doing this flick, since this was very clear to see sometimes. The most hilarious rendition is that of Josh Fadem. The intelligent nerd who came up with this superb idea so he'd be free of all worries. His facial expressions and way of doing sometimes was enormously funny. And you'll clearly recognize parodies of well-known films. And finally Dag's totally crazy parents. For a moment I thought it was Adam Sandler who played the father. That would be one of his first roles I really could appreciate. The biggest let down was the climax of the story. Too ridiculous for words. But maybe so ridiculous, it became somewhat funny. I'm sure most will forget this film. But as an inbetweener this wasn't so bad, even though there was an oversupply of horror characters.